Wednesday, October 01, 2003



Soros calls for 'regime change' in US

Via the ballot box, of course. He's hoping that the American people will wake up and realise what a bunch of nutbars Bush and the PNAC cabal are, and de-elect them. But the most interesting bit is this:

"There is a group of - I would call them extremists - who have the following belief: that international relations are relations of power, not of law, that international law will always follow what power has achieved," he said.

"And therefore [they believe] the United States being the most powerful nation on earth should impose its power, impose its will and its interests on the world and it should do it looking after itself.

"I think this is a very dangerous ideology. It is very dangerous because America is in fact very powerful."

[...]

"Probably President Chirac would not disagree with this philosophy but he is not so powerful - so I am not so worried about what France is doing"

Now, I think that international relations are relations of power, but I'd like them to be something else. Because as Hobbes pointed out, a world where the only relations are those of power is pretty shitty. The powerless spend all their time being screwed over, and the powerful spend all their time being paranoid that someone is going to fly planes into their skyscrapers in retaliation. This isn't good for anyone.

Absent a stronger international system or a counterbalancing power, the best we can hope for is that the United States stops using the power it has. And the best way I can see of that happening is for Bush to be kicked out of the Whitehouse in 2004, and replaced with someone (anyone!) else.

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